1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a position inputting unit to be used for a document editing apparatus such as a Japanese language word processor or a work station, in an image inputting function.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a Japanese language word processor or a work station for office automation, use is being made of a keyboard, a pointing unit, an image inputting unit, or the like as the inputting unit. As a pointing unit there is available a tablet, a joy stick, a mouse, or others. Of these, a mouse has recently been attracting special attention for such reasons as its low cost and the simplicity in which the switching operation can be made for keeping the mouse from the work on the keyboard. In addition, a facsimile is being used as the image inputting unit. However, a contact sensor has been developed in recent years for inputting the picture. Here, instead of inputting the image by inserting a piece of paper as is done for facsimile, there is being proposed a method of inputting the image by manually moving the contact sensor. In such an image inputting unit with a contact sensor, it is possible to input the image of a portion of a piece of paper even when one side of the paper is bound like in the case of a book. This makes it possible to input an arbitrary image less expensively than by the facsimile.
Currently, in preparing a document at the work station or the like, there are cases in which both sentences and figures appear in the document. Accordingly, when image data is desired to be input in the prior art document editing apparatus, the position for inputting the figure is designated first by the mouse, and then the image data is input to the contact sensor or the like to be input in the designated area. Because of this, both of a position inputting unit such as a mouse and an image inputting unit such as a contact sensor are connected at the work station as separate input terminal equipment. Therefore, in editing a document, a user has to alternatively operate the mouse and the contact sensor by hand. In addition to the troublesome nature of the operation and a lowering of the working efficiency, this decreases the available working space as the two separate units are placed on the work station desk.